Lake of Sorrows

Niall Dawson came up behind her. “That’s the bog man finished. We’ll start searching the spoil tomorrow, if that’ll suit.” He meant the sopping heaps of loose peat that Charlie Brazil had been removing from the drain when he’d uncovered the body. They’d have to go through it all by hand, looking for any more clues to the Loughnabrone bog man’s fate. “Good for you to get your hands dirty, Nora. It’ll give your research much greater depth and credibility if you’ve participated in all these different aspects of an excavation. Who knows, you might even get a book out of it.” He smiled at her. “A few of us are heading over to Gough’s in Kilcormac later if you and Cormac would fancy coming along for a drink. They’ve a regular set dance night there on Tuesdays. I assume you know the Clare set, at least?”

“Are you joking? Of course I do.” She lapsed into a broad West Clare accent: “Didn’t I spend every summer at my granny’s below in Inagh? What else was there to do on a Sunday night?”

Dawson laughed. “Very good.”

Nora smiled back at him, and her own American voice returned. “Been a while, though; I’m probably very rusty. Thanks for the invitation, Niall. We might see you there.”

At the parking area, she spotted Charlie Brazil unloading several welded metal grids into the supply shed. He hadn’t had cause to employ his gas mask over the past couple of days, but it was still hanging around his neck, facing backward. In profile, he looked like a strange two-faced Janus. He set down the heavy grids, then gave one of the joints a proprietary check. “Did you make those?” Nora asked.

He seemed startled. “I did, yeah.”

“What are they?”

“Drawing frames. The archaeologists use them as grids when they’re drawing the cuttings.” His ears went bright crimson. “I’m allowed to make what they need here, as long as all my other work gets done.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about a newspaper cutting I saw in Owen Cadogan’s office when I first arrived. It had a picture of two men who made a big discovery here years ago. Their name was Brazil too. Owen Cadogan said they were relations of yours?”

He answered quietly: “My father and his brother.”

“How did they come across the hoard, do you know?” Charlie’s expression told her he’d heard this question before. “Sorry. You must get sick of people asking about them.”

“It’s never been any other way. I only get tired of people asking me where the gold is buried.”

“They don’t. Really?” At first she couldn’t tell if he was serious; another quick glance told her that it was true, but that he managed to keep a sense of humor about it. Charlie Brazil was a quare hawk, all right, just as Owen Cadogan had described him.

“Do your dad and uncle still work on the bog?” she asked.

Charlie’s defenses came up again, and quickly. “Why do you want to know?”

“It’s just that I might like to talk to them as part of my research.”

He looked away, then down at the ground. “My father took the pension last winter. Had to—his lungs are gone.” From the set of his jaw, she sensed some rift between father and son.

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault, is it?”

“And what about your uncle?”

“Never met him. He emigrated before I was born.” Charlie lifted two more drawing frames up into the high container door. “I’d like to have known him, though. I’ve been looking after his bees, and I have a few questions.” He spoke as though he was just a temporary caretaker—typical, Nora realized, of all the beekeepers she’d ever known.

“My grandfather used to keep bees,” she said, “down near the bog in Clare. He’d let me help him tend them sometimes. He never let me mark the queens, though; I always wanted to but he said it was too dangerous, too delicate.” Charlie looked over at her with a new appreciation. Nora thought he was probably one of those keepers so enmeshed in the bees’ world that he would be one of them, if only he could. She suddenly saw him veiled, hands sheathed in white gauntlets, sorting through the writhing insect mass, gently brushing aside the courtiers to capture the queen in her tiny cage, making the mark that set her apart as the necessary mother of replicants, a unique being in a universe of clones. Her grandfather had explained it to her: the queen was the anointed one, chosen at random—the first to hatch. Her first royal duty was to dispatch every one of her sisters, to the last. No sentiment, just a quick spike to the head.

“You must get heather honey, this close to the bog,” she said. “You don’t happen to have any left from last year’s run?” She felt a sudden craving for the taste—dark, almost musky, and never liquid. It was like end-of-summer fruit, sweetness teetering on the edge of decay, the last breath of summer, intensely distilled. “I’d love to see the apiary. I could just stop by—”

“No!” His vehemence seemed to surprise even himself. “There’s no need. I can bring you some.”